 |
|
| |
Foreword: three connecting topics
Europan wishes to encourage the expression of a certain form of architectural and urban innovation. With each competition, Europan also works to implementing these prize-winning ideas. To make sure this very complex process is taken into account by the representatives of the sites proposed during this eighth session, Europan organized in November, 2004, in Ljubljana (Slovenia), a forum with the participation of all the cities and city planners concerned. The goal was to engage them in debate, to explore precisely the logic through which this interlacing of multiple representations could take place, through which exchange systems and site variations these ideas are transformed into concrete projects.
This debate is focused on the major topics facing everybody in very diverse urban situations. They must expect innovative responses, sometimes surprising projects, that they will have to manage. Theses topics can be present in every Europan session: program stakes, questions of scales and relationship between city and nature.
These topics also concern every candidate, and that’s the reason why the synthesis of the three debates held during this Forum of sites offer a broader reflection on the session’s cross-disciplinary framework.
|
| |
INHABIT THE NATURE
Didier Rebois, general-secretary of Europan
City dwellers aspire to “ inhabit nature ”. This topic applies to several Europan implementations, which have taken into account the development or the creation of natural spaces at different scales. It could be the conception of a great metropolitan park in a city centre, or quite the opposite, with the insertion, at a domestic scale, of vegetal microelements in the spaces of transition between the dwellings.
Living in nature answers to an universal need of the human, being, which is part of the living. But the Europan prize-winners gave us very diverse interpretations of that need. Their cultural points of view on natural environment, as soon as it becomes urban, nourishes a debate which is carrying on in some implementations, as in Alicante, Spain, where the Obras French prize-winning team could realise an urban park on a hill in the city centre which offers to the citizens a large open and a space they can appropriate. This park may be inhabited while offering an interesting alternative answer to individual land-consuming housing and to collective housing, with its density often ill-perceived by users themselves. Some other Europan, prize-winning objects are working on the fusion between architecture and nature at urban scale, alternating vegetal masses and built-up masses on an urban grid or on the architectural scale, while conceiving new frontages treated like vegetal skins.
The two projects, which have been taken as references, are of very different types. In Amsterdam, on the river, nearby the harbour already transformed in a housing area, the ilBurg project is supported by an extreme artificialization of nature, with the creation of a residential island. While the Europan 7 project currently implemented in TromsØ, Norway, by the prize-winning Spanish team, Franco / Sentkiewicz, proposes a new way of living on the waterfront, in a natural landscape of great quality that has to be “ valued ” more than “ conquered ”.
|
 |
Han Meyer, professor, researcher, Delft (NL), Europan Scientific Committee Member.
What is it that belongs to the urban field, and what belongs to nature, and which kind of relationship do they maintain ? If we observe that relationship in several countries, we notice that approaches and perceptions are totally different. It is interesting to understand what are the meanings of these differences in the general context of globalisation.
The question we could ask would be how to avoid an standardisation of architecture and nature, how to avoid that everything becoming identical in the years to come ?
Roger Riewe, architect, Graz (A), Europan Scientific Committee Member:
The idea of nature is effectively not the same in every region, therefore it is important to treat the specific aspects and the way nature is perceived. Urban life in nature is not only a philosophical question and if we consider the history of the nineteenth century, we discover there are several different ways of reflecting integration of nature and the city. We associate urban nature with the idea of harmony which has underlaid many doctrines defending the urban parks, the garden cities or even the green cities. What they have in common, at the time, was the idea, the desire to get rid of every ugliness in the industrial city, pollution or too much density, to resolve an unhealthy situation and to create environments of social harmony. Is that question to know how nature may contribute to produce a more harmonious city still topical? Our debate shall also take a keen interest in the way to transfer these ideas on the relationship nature-city in urban projects.
|
| |
IJBURG AMSTERDAM, ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS FOR A NEW RESIDENTIAL URBAN AREA |
| |
 |
 |
Ton Schaap (Nl), Urban planner city of Amsterdam
IJ Burg is located on the outskirts of Amsterdam, on a lake. It is part of a very important development on the delta, linked to the great harbours which established themselves in the west. But why does the city intensify these activities on that side, while the common wish was to keep an environment and green areas just outside of the city? Today, it would be easy to yield to ecological pressure, because all you have to do is to take your bicycle and, in 15 minutes time, you find yourself in the middle of nature.
Just two centuries ago, the urban fabric and the public spaces did coincide, the infrastructure of the canals has been used for merchandise transport, but the people could also go there to take a walk. This has begun to change during the industrial revolution, with a dock which has been built in 1860, combined with the central station, supposing a combination of transport, of movement. But nobody lived there, it was very dangerous, especially at night, which has been cause, on that area, of a segregation between various functions. Nowadays, there are no harbour activities and heavy transportation anymore, and we are able to reallocate it to new functions.
The land, on this new urban archipelago, represents now a very large surface, we will build there about 6,000 dwellings and, as the municipality retained the idea of a certain mix, facilities, infrastructures and shops will be added to the housing.
Therefore we find a railway in the vicinity, and the great motorways network has been connected to a brand new system of roads, streets and alleyways, to parking pedestrian areas. In short, the accessibility on the site is excellent. What is interesting in that project, is its context, a confrontation between heavy infrastructures, warehouses, plants and a nature which is preserved as it was fifty years ago.
But let’s ask ourselves about the meaning of nature in The Netherlands. It is made of pasture space lined with water especially for cows and sheep. It is typical and thus all this natural spaces have been artificially created through the network of dikes with a strict limit between town and country. And as riding a bicycle is an all important activity with the Dutch, dikes lined with water pumps are very attractive for cyclists.
In fact, the Island of Ijburg has been divided into two residential islands, each with its own texture, with its own urban fabric.
A third island has been particularly dedicated to birds, a way to calm down the environmental protest movements against the project. What’s more, that island is the result of negotiations with the inhabitants of Amsterdam and ultimately of a referendum. Measures have been taken to allow natural life to maintain itself as it was in the past, before the construction of that artificial archipelago. On the urbanised islands, the maximum authorised is eight stories, but here are also individual detached houses, on the other side. Today, all this does not resemble an island anymore, but rather a new urban grid. And the large public space of Ijburg is now a beach: this a idea of genius, a space that became very popular, very attractive, very fashionable during the summertime.
First of all, to achieve this project, we thought about a good accessibility and a good delimitation between what is public and what is private. On the nearby island, called Java, there are on one side individual houses with gardens oriented towards the water, and on the other side what is public, with cars, access to cyclists and pedestrians. This urban extension offers a lot of possibilities to invent new typologies of blocks and buildings. We resumed it on the two built-up islands.
In Havana Island, we took inspiration from the urban parks created in the 17th century by a civil engineer for a rich Amsterdam merchant, in the early stages of capitalism: houses, driveways and very beautiful farms.
We told to ourselves “we are going to design a grid” with several islets, with a road in the middle for public transportation and a sea view for everybody. Manhattan has been another source of inspiration, because the gamble of this project is to have the whole implementation managed by private enterprise. The land is occupied with efficiency and the municipality takes in charge only the road works and the common services.
The types of road works differ with each island. The streetcar located in the middle connects them, bridges have been conceived high enough so that ships and boats could cross, the streets on the island are 20 to 30 meters wide and they are completed by a environment-friendly mobility network, pedestrian paths, public spaces, paths for walkers. The public waterfront which is bordering one side of the islands opposes itself to the houses built on the other side, with their gardens overlooking the water.
Four parks are planned, as a way to introduce a rather domesticated and cultivated nature, with playgrounds for the children. Even if the density is relatively high, 70 houses per acre, everyone wants to have a garden at his disposal, either as a private lot adjoining the dwellings, or as a green collective area with enough parking spaces for bicycles.
The first buildings will soon be completed and overlook a street which is 20 meters wide. The regulations are based on a very simple principle: formal exterior, informal interiors. There are nevertheless a few disappointments in terms of program, the economic deterioration of the building market leads to some mistakes which, I hope, will be subsequently avoided.
At the door front of individual houses, we find pontoons giving access to the water, very clean at this place, where one can take a swim or tie up one’s boat.
As we look for architectural diversity, there has been also a desire by the architects to work together on the project of the same islet. But the layout is not done vertically, but horizontally, one of the architects manages the ground floor, another one the first floors, another the upper floors and the fourth one is in charge of placing houses on the roof.
The whole process represents a huge investment for a multifunctional program. For the public space one tries to define as well as possible the sites for the trees, the parking lots, the pedestrian zones, the great landscaped parks where one will find cafés, where fathers could watch their children play in the sand. The great park will be built up around natural elements like the sand, grass, granite and planted trees. All the streets will be paved with granite from China. |
| |
 |
| |
Europan Scientific Committee Member |
| |
Han Meyer: The Netherlands are a very interesting country, when we’re talking about nature. Is it a natural nature or an artificial one ? Hard to tell! Thus, it is surprising that as a way to not build in nature, in the green areas around Amsterdam, one will build near the water. Because water is part of nature and it is even more natural than the green areas. In what measure nature is playing or not a part at image level, of the communication regarding the project? When one gets down to work and implements a project of such a scope, which weight has had the concept of nature in the preliminary debates, before its implementation? |
| |
Ton Schaap: The first decision to build Ijburg has been taken by the political authorities of the city. Water is obviously a part of nature, but at this place it is not very deep. One of the reasons is also that water belongs to the city, unlike the farm lands which are not its property. We have also offered, in that project, several measures in compensation, like the islands exclusively reserved to birds, or the parks… All this played an important role in the negotiations with officials in charge of the environment’s preservation. In a first stage, these organisations were against the urban project, but then, there has been a referendum, with a positive result. And that referendum also allows to redynamise the shores, an urban phenomenon common with many cities in Europe since ten years or so, like Barcelona, Genoa, Berlin, Hamburg, where riverbanks in the middle of the cities are reactivated. |
| |
Dieter Polkowski, in charge of urban development, Hamburg: The Hamburg situation is rather different because we have to integrate the tides, the ebb and the flow. Between two tides, high tide and low tide, the difference may reach seven meters. This forces us to have a different approach towards water and nature. |
| |
IS NATURE RESISTING THE URBAN? TROMSØ, Europan 7 project |
| |
 |
 |
Knut Erik Dahl, president of Europan Norway and urban planner, city of TromsØ:
The university of TromsØ launched a study program on the future of the region, located in the northern part of Norway. It proved very difficult for me to believe what is said in conclusion of that study: when my children will be my age, they could row all the way to Japan, because of the predicted melting of the permafrost.
This will operate a radical change in these northern regions, which are an all important geopolitical area of the planet. Today, we see the reopening of the Russian border and some exchanges, although it has been the geopolitical core of the Cold War for a long time. Now, this is a strategic place, because a quarter of the oil and natural gas resources are located there. That region has also many forests and ore. Everyone acknowledges that dramatic changes could occur there. There is much uncertainty in the whole region, and there is also a probability of instability. The risk is important to see nuclear wastes leaving from Saint-Petersburg and transported from there to the Baltic Sea.
Norway has invested 16 million Norwegian crowns in the Terminal of the North Sea. But we also have an academic and scientific centre. I am asking myself where are the researchers really interested in the transformation of that region?
In TromsØ, you are amid real nature, the one offered by God, the original nature. It is that authentic nature which I defend. On that subject, I have a moral position. Yesterday, someone asked me : “How can you live up there ?” Where it’s always dark in the middle of the day. It is true that this has had some strange effects on the personality and identity. According to some, the city of TromsØ is not a city, but a “notion”.
When one talks about the future, there are statements that are more long lived than others. TromsØ is a green city, in fact an island of green, with a university, but since a few years, the city has been given over to building contractors. People used to live in small houses, then the island became a place of architectural experimentation. Previously, there was nothing on that island, it was only nature. Every architectural project must assume a position: in what measure will we introduce the artificial nature in the project and transform the original and genuine nature? Several international competitions were organised in TromsØ. One of these competitions has been won by the Space Group agency around the question “How to treat water in its relationship with nature?”. The Europan 7 site located on the continent just in front of the island is also related to that question, of the relationship between water and new urban spaces, and more globally to the issue: how these more residential urban areas and a strong nature could reconcile themselves with its beauty, but also its harshness, the cold, the snow, the rather scarce daylight.
|
| |
 |
 |
David Franco, architect, Madrid (E), prize-winner architect in TromsØ:
Our prize-winning project for that competition had an approach which was both poetic and scientific. And, regarding the context, there was obviously many things that we did not know and that have escaped us. For us, the ideas project consisted essentially in an answer to the question: is it possible to create a housing project that would really take into account the arctic light. We tried to orient our tours, to play with the light we used as a way of mediation.
After the competition, we have been to TromsØ, where we have met the contractor, a unique private owner, which was an element much in favour of the project.
We entered in an operational process, and a feasibility study has been entrusted to us. The contracting authority demanded for mixed typologies. But considering the present state of the real estate market, there has been a period during which the building pressure on the site became less important. And rather than readjust the process planned in the study, we have abandoned and we have resumed the project, starting it up all over again. Thus we worked through three steps, the competition project, the study in continuity and the new project, retooled on account of the economic climate. We are very satisfied of that situation which forced us to call our approach into question, even if many ideas have been maintained today. That new project does not suit me from an architectural, plastic point of view as much as the previous one in competition, but the process we have been through on a professional level since the competition is very enriching. It is due for a large part to the fact that the contracting authorities gave us almost carte blanche, even though it could be rather risky for them. They just suggested the type of housing and the kind of densities we should aim at.
After having developed a linear plan, then we divided it following mixed typologies between erected buildings and other ones, more flat, more in relation with nature. When we discovered the site, it is the importance of the flora, the vegetation, and we have nearby the site something more rare, a forest we have taken as a starting point, trying to extend it, in a sequence of natural and artificial communal spaces.
We designed several green, L-shaped strips, and we created three different types of buildings. This leads us then to propose a very varied project, playing with variations around a type of building, taking a bio-correlation into account, integrating the surrounding natural areas. We integrated the urban and architectural conception and the natural feature of the site respecting them, even by increasing their value.
Besides the actual project of residential area itself, linked to nature, we have been asked for another urban study on the northern side of the site, related with networks and accessibility issues. The solution we proposed to the main contracting authority, a commercial transportation company in TromsØ and to every local authorities aimed to understand nature and to work on the project in parallel and in a progressive way. For instance, we have conceived a new parking lot which will change the whole structure of the land, then the road has been retooled as a main communication artery linked to a bridge. These spaces are setting themselves up in a relationship of progressive discovery of nature. We designed a passageway covered with a roof, which crosses the road towards the forest on one side, creating some sort of a corridor. Then we projected six buildings connected with two more green passageways also crossing the road.
To reintroduce nature in our project, we are starting from what we find here in Norway. For instance, to design the landscape, we would like to use these strange plants which are neither seaweed, nor moss, but rather like a kind of lichen.
|
| |
Europan Scientific Committee Member |
| |
 |
 |
Han Meyer: What is striking on that approach, it is to see how one can change the way of seeing things, as soon as one integrates the complexity of reality and the specificity of the context. The difference, in TromsØ, compared with the case of Ijburg, is that it’s not about creating a new nature, but an architectural project which must blend with existing nature.
Carlos Fernandes, engineer, urban planning director, city of Sintra (P): All this reminds me a verse by a great Portuguese poet: “ If someday you should find the limits of the infinite, if the infinite had any limits, then repel it with your arms!”.
José Maria Cardenas Arnedo, director general, department of housing, region Cantabrica: It seems to me that we are not studying enough if it is possible to live in nature while respecting what is already existing. And this is the great challenge we are facing in Cantabrica. We want to see a built-up typology, which can be implemented there without any intervention on nature itself, it is a well-known exercise for engineers, and they know how to solve it. We must get out of that struggle of human beings against nature, and understand if man is able today to live in nature. In northern Spain, we have a great wild nature, where one can ask if we should proscribe every transformation of the coastal line. But obviously, many cities would not exist if any construction were forbidden on the littoral. For me, it is the core of the discussion: between transforming nature et living in the middle it without destroying it, as in TromsØ, or building an artificial nature in the areas that are subject to new works, like in Amsterdam. To colonise nature without changing it, respecting environments and specific climatic conditions, is it possible? |
 |
Ola B. Siverts, urban planner and social anthropologist, Bergen, Norway: In Norway, we must know that nature remains still an integrating part of the inner cities project themselves. I am an urban anthropologist and I am also presiding an architecture and urban planning office. You probably think that Norwegians are a little bit exotic. The city of Bergen, which has 35 000 habitants and is participating in Europan 8, proposed a site rather located on the outside of the city. As a member of the inhabitants association of that town, I discussed with inhabitants of the area where the site is located. One of them is a geologist, whose activity is taking place in nature and when he’s going for a walk in the city centre, what strikes him is not the very pronounced density, but the intervention of natural elements in an urban site, the cobble stones imported from Portugal, the granite from China, the stones of the church are coming from the northern Norway, while the marble is from Italy. Nature has penetrated in the city.
There is also a botanist, who has observed the city from his point of view : he found there all sort of plants, in the parks, thirteen tree species native to Norway. He organised a visit of that area for the schools students to make them discover these trees while introducing them to the natural history of Norway. Lastly, a zoologist, also living in that area, counted the different birds, rats and other animal species present in the city. These are different spectrums of the natural and wild life living in the city centre.
Thus, in Norway, in every city, one lives very close to nature. In 10 -15 minutes of walking or by bus, you are in the middle of nature. It is in our culture to go towards nature as a way to purify our souls, so to say. It is important, for all the architects who wish to win the competition in Norway to understand the conception of nature in that country. How nature is involved in the life of a Norwegian. It’s a part of our identity.
Roger Riewe: Nature as a construction is an important theme because nature is only the representation we maintain of it. The idea itself of genuineness of nature is a built-up notion of nature. One has to go out of the idea that nature may be colonised by man and closer to a trans-historic idea, because we always worked with nature. During the XIX-th century appears the notion of landscape and it is concretely the moment when we began to build up landscapes. On the outskirts of Graz, for instance, there is a site which has been totally transformed, two hundred years ago, because the Archduke wanted it to be like Tuscany. But today everyone thinks that this landscape naturally resembles Tuscany.
Adriaan van der Linden, in charge of the urban project, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: We have five rivers crossing the city of Dordrecht, and we have five different concepts regarding the integration of nature in the urban fabric. We call that territorial system and ecological stability. The current network not only covers the landscapes surrounding the city, but also the one crossing the city. The valleys of these rivers are not constructible. Some green areas are crossing through the city, one of them is located on the river bank. We design a very special urban project by creating natural spaces between strong urban areas and the river.
In Dordrecht, as in Hamburg, we must include in urbanism the tides phenomenon, because flooding problems are regularly reappearing. That’s the reason why the city has been mostly built well above the water level. The floods and tides punctuate the life of the whole city, especially the old town, which is the lowest delta in The Netherlands, and also the most weak part regarding the struggle against these floods. We have learned that we cannot control water, that we must let it flow with its own pace and live with it. One of the challenges is to find an architectural form which could cope with the floods. Four hundred years ago, houses were built in which the floorboards were made of stone, that people washed after the floods, and they transported their furniture up to the first floor. Today, articles of furniture are too heavy to be lifted up to the first floor, which is a mistake. Some believe that may ignore nature, but it is as dangerous to ignore as to try to control it. Beneath a great polder, there was a site where we planned an industrial zone. We began its construction twenty years after its conception, and this was around that moment that we discovered it was a natural floodable zone. Instead of building great dikes, one must rather take into account the floods as an element to integrate in urban life.
|
 |
Dieter Polkowski, in charge of the development, Hamburg, Germany: In Hamburg, regarding the floods, a very interesting solution has been adopted, although it might seem a bit contradictory. For us, it would be a disaster to leave water masses flood into the harbour. In Hamburg, the site is not located in the middle of the nature but in an industrial zone where nature has been developed a lot. When we talk about development, we always talk about the way of creating attractive spaces where people like to live, where the quality of water is obvious and therefore contributes to the attractiveness of these spaces. But we have taken the option of raise the built-up nearby spaces as a way of protection against floods. The environmental preservationists demand to find again the natural topographic conditions and to live in conformity with nature. But unfortunately, to live in the vicinity of nature in Hamburg, it is not enough to plant trees on the shores, it is also necessary to build raised platforms to protect oneself.
Ton Shaap : The vicinity of water and therefore of nature is a specific quality which attracts people, especially regarding the residential spaces. I think that the combination bicycle + boat has a great future in urban mobility for the ten years to come. In Ijburg, it is planned that the inhabitants may circulate by boat to reach the city centre, which is not very far. It is a very attractive location, I would not say that it is a strong urbanity, but a peaceful city, because of its residential quality, where, regarding the recreation activities, the great city is rapidly and easily reachable. |
|
